Forget that little exhibition on Washington Road, the big news is that Employee No. 2 and I played nine holes yesterday. It was pretty wet out there, but the test drive of her new Smith & Nephew hip came off without a hitch. The quality of play was shockingly good, and you humbled correspondent hit the first great shot of the new season.... a 4-hybrid drawn around trees that landed softly under the pin on our seventh green. There's no particular reason for you to care, but you know the feeling of such a shot and your heart is sufficiently magnanimous to enjoy it on behalf of others....
What a great opportunity for the LPGA. With the big Tour suffering a pre-Masters lull, their iconic first major offering a prime time TV window and a last group featuring the best American player going mano-a-mano head-to-head with Snidley Whiplash Suzann Pettersen, what could go wrong?
Thompson led the tour’s first major of the season, the ANA Inspiration, by two strokes after 54 holes, but a ruling on Sunday cost her four strokes.
As Thompson was putting on the 12th hole during the final round, the Golf Channel commentators began talking about a rules infraction that had recently been brought to their attention — but it happened in the third round.
On the 17th hole on Saturday, video shows Thompson marking her ball before attempting a short putt. In the replay, Thompson’s coin was not visible when she marked her ball, but it was afterward when she placed the ball back on the green, meaning she had replaced the ball in the wrong place.
Officials retroactively assessed Thompson with a two-stroke penalty for playing from the wrong place, plus an additional two strokes for signing an incorrect scorecard after the third round.
Good news, LPGA. You figured out how to break the Golf.com news embargo of your major... The flip side? Headers like this:
Column: Lexi Thompson mugged by 'armchair weasel' in ANA heartbreaker
Let's break this down into its relevant constituencies, shall we? I think we have three separate issues to discuss, as follows:
- Was there a crime? With the benefit of the Golf Channel video, was the manner in which Lexi marked and replaced her ball deserving of a penalty;
- How do we fell about fans calling in observed penalties, armchair weasels or not?
- There's got to be a morning after? Or perhaps not..... No doubt you were upset about a penalty being imposed in the middle of the final round that related to the prior day's play, but is that fair?
To address the first, I'll first excerpt a portion of John Wood's answer in this week's Tour Confidential:
That being said, Lexi's mark and re-mark was very curious. The putt practically seemed a gimme, and yet it was obvious and plain the ball was placed in a different position than where it originally lay. I just don't get it. In a sense, you could almost understand something like this happening if someone marks, waits, walks around, reads the putt, waits for others to finish, and then returns to their mark to replace their ball. But this wasn't that. This was mark, lift, and replace in practically one motion, with no time elapsing. Like I said, there's got to be more to this.
Let's get some of the obvious stuff out of the way, including that there is no credible allegation of intent.... It's an awkward moment where Lexi seemingly intends to putt out, has second thoughts and throws the coin down but from the side... Very sloppy and very undisciplined.
But it is the responsibility of the player to return the ball to its original position, and she screwed that up. It's horrible tradecraft, and Lexi should be a tad embarrassed.
It's on No. 2 on which we'll have the most substantial argument. Here's Josh Sens from the TC panel:
From the video replay, it looks like a violation. And I'd have no problem with Lexi being slapped with a two-stroke penalty if a fellow player or a rules official had called her on it. But a viewer call in that results in a penalty the following day? Enough with the couch potato whistle blowers. Let the rules of the game—and the code of golf that Michael refers to above—be enforced by the players and the officials on hand.
And Golf Channel had this seemingly immediately:
Tiger watching women's golf? Well, he always did have a thing for those blondes....
I agree that I detest the phone calls and e-mails from viewers that affect tournaments, but I've over-ruled myself. Stick with me and see if I can make you agree. The basic argument seems to be that there's no other sport in which people can phone in that they saw officials get it wrong. That's literally true but effectively wrong....
What's happened in virtually every other major sports is that they've reacted to what can be seen on TV by implementing procedures by which that video can be used to change the call. We still argue about it, but there's a general consensus that if the technology can capture it, that we want to get the calls right.
To me, the biggest takeaway from the DJ fiasco at Oakmont was that in 2016, the USGA didn't have an official in a video booth ready to review anything that might come up. They literally had to walk in from the golf course.... Talk about bad tradecraft....
Secondly, on this specific subject, golf is different.... I know, it's a bit of a cliche by now, but it really is the only sport where the player is responsible for his own score. I don't like the optics any more than others, but I simply can't conclude that a golfer wouldn't want all available information before signing his or her card.... It's what separates us from the other primates.
I'll also note that frequently the folks calling in are trying to help the player.... When David Eger called the Masters a few years ago about Tiger's drop, it was to avoid this situation:
And how do you ding Lexi for signing an incorrect scorecard when it was correct at the time she signed it? Give her the two-stroke penalty for mis-marking her ball, if you must, but four strokes was cruel and unusual punishment.
And back then, it was a DQ....
I know you're upset with me now, but I'm hoping to make things right on our third issue. There hasn't been a lot of commentary, because this happened late last night. But no one has hit on an issue that has long troubled me on this subject...
Each round of golf should be played, to the extent possible, under the same rules and conditions.... But in an important sens they're not. The rules for the final round are different, in that what happened to Lexi in the third round could not have happened in the fourth.... Let me explain.
Hypothetically, let's assume that an avid LPGA fan watches the event on his or her DVR Monday morning, and spots a bad mark of the ball. He or she picks up the phone and calls the LPGA, and is told, "Thank you, but the tournament is over". See the difference? There has to be a point where the round is finished and is in the books, and we don't look back.
Yes, her infraction was trivial and related to a tap-in that even Lexi couldn't have missed.... But as a golfer that's not good enough. She failed in her responsibilities, and she risked the penalty. But like any game in any sport, there comes a time when that round or game is concluded and the results are final.... and I'm thinking that should come shortly after the last group posts but surely before the first group tees off the next morning.
Your thoughts?
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